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AN ORATION 
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- DELIVERED IN THE CITY OF CHARLESTON 


ON THE 


|. TWENTY-SRVBNTH ANNIVERSARY 


OF THE H 


EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION. | 


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By - H 


GEORGE W. MURRAY. Hl 


Taian tee ra ea eer eee a 


Waker, Evans & Cogswetr Co., Prinrers AnD SraTroners, 
Nos. 3 and 5 Broad and 117 East Bay Sts. 


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CHARLESTON, §. C.: iH 
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1890. : 








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IF FLOWERS COLLECTION 


AN ORATION 
DELIVERED IN THE CITY OF CHARLESTON 


ON THE 
TWENTY-SEVENTE ANNIVERSARY 


OF THE 


Emancipation Proclamation. 


By GEORGE W. MURRAY. 


My Friends:—In an attempt to address you on sucha 
momentous occasion, taking our condition. and circum- 
stances into consideration, it is natural that I should be 
filled with emotions of joy and pride, sorrow and shame. 

Joy and pride nat only because we are free, but that 
during the comparatively short period of Emancipation we 
have surpassed the record of all other people similarly situ- 
ated. 

Sorrow and shame, because we have left undone so much 

._ that we could have done to strengthen our standing among 
other tribes and nationalities and give us more influence in 
the government under which we live. 

Looking out upon the great and limitless periods of time 
in which Nature’s self seems to die and molder away, form- 
ing new strata of earth and repeopling the same, these re- 
curring anniversaries are but short mile-stones at which we 
should halt fora moment and calculate our moral, religious, 
financial and political longitude and latitude to find out 

: whether the forces with which we are surrounded are carry- 
___ ing us up tothe haven of human ambition, or down into the 
sloughs of degradation and destruction. 

In my humble opinion the event that we have met to 
commemorate is too little understood and appreciated by 
the race as a whole. ; 

All civilized nations and tribes, in accordance with their 
intelligence, have their great holiday and festive occasions, 





2 


wherein they meet, celebrate and commemorate some 
great event by which they were benefited. 

Take the different tribes that make up the population of 
our beautiful city, ‘“‘ where every prospect pleases and onl 
man is vile,” and you will find the German, Irish, Dute 
and Italian, each interested in some anniversary peculiar 
and interesting only to his own tribe, and I do not believe that 
any among them have as much cause for rejoicing and 
thanksgivings on his recurring anniversary as we. j 

While we all are Americans and love our country, and 
notwithstanding that the blood of Crispus Attucks and that 
of other Negro soldiers, under the lead of Marion and 
Sumter, was among the first to stain the soil for Independ- 
ence, yet the 4th of July should not have half the charms 
for us as the first day of January, 

In many respects, our perseverence in celebrating the 4th 
of July to the exclusion of the 1st day of January, our own 
joyous day ot freedom, borders on servile imitation, with 
little reason to support it. 

The victory gained under the banner of Independence, 
which makes the 4th of July dear and martian to the 
‘ whites, because it marks the end of tyranny and tyrannical 
restrictions to them, prolonged greater tyranny and stronger 
restrictions, and more intensified slavery to the blacks. 

The grandest event in the history of our country, for us, 
occurred on the first day of January, 1862, when Abraham 
Lincoln, directed by God, and whose hands were guided by 
the shades of all the holy angels, as they looked down upon 
him smilingly from their glorious habitations, and the° 
prayers of all the good on earth, issued that immortal pa- 
per, read in your hearing, the Emancipation Proclamation. 

It was the day in which all the prayers poured forth by 
a wronged, injured and suffering people for two hundred 
and fifty years, were answered in the statutes of the na- 
tion. 

But all the prayers of black mothers, with their loving 
babes clinging to their heaving breasts, into whose smilin 

and prattling faces unmindful of the cruel fate that awaite 

them, as they gazed, while the tear drops rolled down their 
sable cheeks as fountains, and their supplications rose before 
the throne of God as they thought of the time when they 
should be separated from their loving infants ; all the pray- 
ers of the rude and hoary fathers in ebony, in whose faces 
sorrow had left its indelible foot-prints, as they gazed for 
the last time on their loving sons in whom all their pride 


3 


and hopes were centered, and whose mournful supplications ~ 
rung so often upon the telephones of heaven that they 
kept angels in waiting; all the prayers and self-denials of 
the abolitionists, that noble organization whose members 
practiced what they preached, and in their homage and 
devotion, lived so near the throne of God that they could 
hear the whisperings of His holy angels encouraging them 
on and urging them to greater exertions in behalf of suffer- 
ing humanity, were not sufficient to make good all the 
principles of that glorious Proclamation, 

No, not even the blood of Sumner, as it oozed from his 
noble head, from a wound inflicted by slavery personified, , 
staining the carpeting of the national hall of legislation asa 
memento of slavery’s cruelty, and dedicated to the goddess 
of slavery; nor that of John Brown, as it poured from his 
lifeless carcass dangling from the scaffold at Harper’s 
Ferry, and who, in meekness and resignation, in laying his 
own precious life on the altar of freedom, resembled Christ, 
was a sufficient ransom. ; 

The whole nation had sinned, and the whole nation had 
to suffer for it. 

To atone for its long yearsof human bondage and degra- 
tion, the nation had to offer upon altars of smoke and 
blood billions of dollars and nearly a million of lives, in- 
cluding that of its noblest and wisest President, to appease 
the smoldering anger of God at the wrong of centuries. 

I wish it indelibly written upon your minds, in letters 
of shining brightness, that Emancipation is dual in itself, 
physical and mental. 

Everywhere and at all times, mental slavery remains 
long after physical slavery has been abolished, and is al- 
ways the chief hindrance to the progress of the newly 
emancipated. 

It is long after the physical chains are broken, before the 
ex-slave is reconciled to the fact, or convinced that it is 
neither natural nor right to serve his fellow-man without 
pay, or cease to look upon everything connected with the 
master class, in habits, manners, associations, language and 
color, however repugnant to right some of them may be, 
as being superior in every essential to him and all his con- 
nections. 

It willtake long years of teaching the doctrine of human 
equality, race pride and self-respect before he shall have 
been educated up to that stage, in which he shall be con- 
scious of -his own equality, manhood and fitness. 


4 


Our physical emancipation is an assured fact, our mental 
freedom is hardly begun. 

The former was wrought out by our friends, the latter 
can be made possible only through and by ourselves. 

The peculiar mission of the old abolition school, was to 
train and produce an element powerful enough to mold a 
national sentiment of pity, strong enough to cause the 
physical freedom of the slave. 

The especial mission of the new school, the future leadérs 
of the race, is to create within the emancipated class suffi- 
cient self respect and race pride to demand the respect and 
consideration of others. 

Where the work of the old school ended, that of the new 
begun. . 

The powerful eloquence, wisdom and philanthropy of 
Sumner, the humility and martyrdom of John Brown, the 
dedication of the priceless life of the great and wise Lincoln 
to the goddess of slavery and the matchless service of their 
co-workers, tended to mold a sentiment of pity so strong 
that it not only brought our physical freedom, but also the 
precious boon of citizenship without which we would have 
been half free and half slave. 

After nearly doubling our population, and increasing 
our wealth by five hundred fold, and our education by 
thousands. We find to-day, on our twenty-ninth anniver- 
sary, that our influence is not half as great as it was some 
fifteen or twenty years ago. 

Do you ask why? Because that great humanitarian and 
philanthropic generation of pitiers made wise, noble and 
heroic in the schools of Garrison, Sumner, Phillips, Wayland, 
Channing and their associates, is gone and going, and the 
immediate necessity of their schgol having cea to exist, 
the sentiment created by it is dying with it. 

We are now put to the crucial test, in the fiery furnace 
of competition intensively heated by the inordinate preju- 
dices of ages in order that if we succeed those who doubt 
our capabilities and possibilities, might have ample proof of 
our fitness for equality among the rest of mankind. 

All must admit that the work of our physical emancipa- 
tion was great, but in comparison to the magnitude of what 
has to be done to bring about our mental freedom, it sinks 
in»its presence, as the evening star does in the brilliancy 
and grandeur of the king of day. 

The task of the great workers for physical emancipation 
was to free the limbs of one class, the immense undertaking 


5 


of our present and future leaders must be the emancipa-- 
tion of the minds of three classes, the slaves, the masters, 
and the rest of mankind. 

‘As soon as the slave is brought down to the standard of 
idolizing the master, he and the rest of mankind, especially 
where there is physical difference become slaves to the 
belief that the slave is naturally inferior. 

Whenever slavery lasts long cnough to create such con- 
ditions they continue long after the original cause is re- 
moved and are the principal hindrances and draw-backs to 
the progress of freedmen. 

This slavish idolatry exposes itself, in the ex-slave’s 
preference for everything that is old master’s or looks like 
him. 

In such a stagnant and slavish condition we find our- 
selves to-day, and there we will remain contemned by all 
free and self-respecting people until we free ourselves from 
this inward bondage. 

We must get down to work at once to create within our- 
selves race-pride and self respect. 

We can no more expect to rise without them than a lazy 
unself-respecting person can demand the respect and con- 
sideration of his neighbors. 

Through the age of pity and sentimentalism we have 
passed, in which the hopes and expectatious of the race 
were magnified to such an extent that it almost caused ins 
action and helplessness. 

Our leaders in such an age played their part well, but 
conditions, in many respects, have changed, and the times 
demand a different kind of leadership. 

We find ourselves in too great a proportion still ignorant, 
poor, unself-respecting, non race-loving, without influence 
in business, law or politics and helpless. 

Our condition demands a leadership wise enough to 
see the needs of the race, with innate resources enough to’ 

‘provide for them, and manhood and endurance sufficient to 
execute their plans. 

Our Moseses are either dead or dying, and yet we are in 
the thickest jungles, and we must have Joshuas to lead the 
children to the promised land. 

The greatest injury that slavery ever does a people is to 
destroy its self respect and tribal pride, the greatest service 
that its leadership can render is to restore the lost feelings 
and sentiments, without which no individual or nation is 
regarded by the rest of mankind. 


re 


6 


Our Eee must be taught that it is their condition, and 
not the color of their skins, nor the texture of their hair, 
that causes them to be snubbed in the business world, 
whipped of justice in the court room, shorn of influence in 
the political, and scorned in the social world, and that color 
is only a badge oftheir condition. 

The poorer class of white people, though they do not have 
the odds and barriers to contend against as we, on account 
of color, still by reason of the discriminations of the rich 
against the poor, to better their condition and elevate their 
class, they are organizing into clubs from one end of this 
land to the other. 

The result of the recent elections to a great extent, was 
the molding into thunder-bolts, all their real and supposed 
grievances which they blasted through the ballot om a 
privilege in great measure denied you. 

Again, as white men, all the avenues of labor, commerce 
and politics, from the little boot-black to the merehant 
prince or chief ruler of the nation, in proportion to their 
talent and fitness, are open to them, while even the fields of 
manual labor are closed and being closed on us. 

The doors of the factories and furnaces are slammed in 
our faces, and we are told in plain English that we are not 
wanted within their confines, and what is more appalling 
this practice obtains more or less Nurth and South. 

Situations as clerks and salesmen in business made possi- 
ble only by our consumption and patronage are denied us. 

Not only is the law of business sociality and marriage 
reversed in our case, but even legislative enactments are set 
up against us. 

Situations as teachers in schools created exclusively for 
negro children, supported by taxes paid out of the pockets 
of negro citizens, in many instances, and notably in Charles- 
ton are denied us, and the teachers selected for revenue 
only in many instances, are away out of sympathy with 
their pupils, whom they endeavor to impress with the 
notion of not how great is the possibility of obtaining their 
standard, but how utterly inferior they naturally are. 

Almost all the representation both local and national 
based upon our numbers and contributions to the govern- 
ment directly or indirectly, either fraudulently or violently 
usurped. 

Our situation is deplorable indeed and demands a leader- ~ 
ship with eyes enough to see it, brains enough to find a 
remedy and manhood sufficient to apply it. 


7 


All the blame for our ills should not be attributed to the 
white people. I would rather say we should blame our- 
selves for most of them. 

Whenever we can infuse into ourselves that we are as 
grand, noble and honorable as any other people, more than 
half of our battle shall have been fought and if we never 
produce this pride of race and self respect, the race is doom- 
ed to everlasting degradation. 

A man that is always showing by his actions that he 
regards another so much superior to himself, that he is ever 
trying to be like him, is never regarded by the latter as his 
equal. 

While labor is every where and always honorable, yet we 
must raise our standard higher than a monopoly of the 
lowest order of manual labor. 

It is a burning illustration of our incapacity to compete 
in the race of life with others and tends to decrease rather 
than enhance race pride, the lever power. 

_It is true we have amassed some wealth but in certain 
respects it is in a crude state, and does not take such shape 
as would inspire the race either old cr young, with pride in 
itself. 

In order to create pride and confidence, our wealth and 
talent must beam out in magnificent business blocks, pow- 
erful banking houses, strong railroad stock and splendid 
mansions owned and controlled by Negroes. 

Our talent and,wit must shine and sparkle in great dai- 
hes, magazines, standard books, histories and fiction spring- 
ing from and sustained by Negro genius. 

_ In the morning, after prayer, you will call your little 

sons around you and tell them that they are just as good 
as your white neighbors’ sons, that all men sprung from 
Adam, the common father, and that they must think as 
much of themselves as your white neighbors’ sons. 

Then you will take them by the hands and lead them 
into street cars manned only by white men, from that into 
grocery steres where they will see only white bosses and 
clerks, again into dry goods stores where you are served 
alone by white clerks under the orders of white bosses, they 
will find nearly every police officer white, all the splendid 
turnouts and palatial mansions owned by the whites, all the 
well-dressed people white, and they, on returning home after 
their day’s experience, will begin to reason for themselves, 

‘They will very soon come to the conclusion that difference 
in color causes difference in condition, and will commence 


8 


to wish that their complexion was such as would enable 
them to enjoy this higher condition, while even you in 
every movement of your journey have been materially con- 
tributing to aid this conclusion. 

While your sons will soon become sorry that they are not 
white on account of the superior advantages offered that 
color, the white boys will be correspondingly glad that they 
are not black, on account of the disadvantage accompany-~ 
ing that color. 

The great problem for us to solve as a race, is how to 
make as good condition, as high and honorable employment 
for our color, for our sons and daughters, as the whites 
make for theirs, and as long as we fail to do that, our color 
‘a be a badge of inferiority not only to others, but our- 
selves. 


THE BUSINESS OF A RACE OR COUNTRY ITS MAIN LEVER. 


The strength of the organism and power of every com- 
munity is dependent upon a complete blending of its 
various professions and business interests, but around the 
bnsiness and commercial classes everywhere rotate and 
depend all other classes, as the satellites do around the sun. 

The lawyers, doctors, politicians, mechanics, laborers and 
even ministers coquette and fondle the business men. 

The business class is to the social body what the great 
network of veins and arteries are to the natural. 

The highest statesmanship of every country is displayed in 
efforts to obtain. that part of the business and carrying trade 
of the world commensurate with the number of its inhabi- 
tants and their consumptions, without which each country 
is in some degree a slave to others. 

This principle was the corner-stone of American Inde- 
pendence, and stands at the very foundation of our protee- 
tive system. 

It is a want of a proper appreciation and execution of 
business principles that prevent Ireland from enjoying that 
freedom for which all Irishmen have been struggling for 
the last four hundred years. 

She is still knocking at the doors of self-government and 
~ equality with other lands, but she will never enjoy those 
' privileges in their fullest sense as long as English landlords 
collect the money paid as rent on her soil and the income 
from investments within her borders, no matter how many 
Emmets as orators and martyrs and Parnells as statesmen 
she may produce. 


9 


There should be no misunderstanding of the fact, that in 
order to elevate ourselves we must get control of that propor- 
tion of the business of this country resulting from our 
numbers and consumptions. 

As a matter of self-preservatiou, as a matter of life and 
death, for the sake of our suffering race and to ameliorate 
our own condition, we are bound to spend our money and 
labor more thoughtfully than we have been, remembering 
that in the long run the influence of the coppers, dimes and 
dollars falling in the drawers of the business men outweigh 
all the eloquence and genius of the brilliant statesman in 
the halls of legislation. 


A race in our situation should always spend its money 
with a double object in view, first to obtain its full immedi- 
ate value to aid the individual; secondly, to spend it where 
its influence will be most potent in helping the race as a 
whole, bearing in mind that it is its influence, and not its 
immediate value that goes on down the ages doubling and 
reduplicating, making business, employment and wealth for 
generations unborn. 


I am aware that very many people are adverse to this 
doctrine, but our situation is desperate and we must find a 
remedy. ; 

The race must produce a leadership with manhood 
enough at all hazards, even life, if necessary, to teach 
and train our people to love and respect themselves and 
work for their elevation by doing for themselves what all 
other tribes or nationalities do for their benefit. 

The white man, however philanthropic and humanitarian 
cannot perform this duty for us. 

By his words, deeds of kindness and example he can 
teach others to pity, but not respect and admire us, and no 
one is regarded to any considerable extent who is not res- 
pected and admired. 


We have this the mighty lever, our labor, by which we 
can be elevated, if we would only see it, and have moral 
courage enough to use it as a means to that end. 

About eighty per cent. of all the crude wealth dug out of 
the soil of this State, both in the fields and phosphate beds, 
is from the labor of our hands. 

We are the very foundation of. nearly all the wealth of 
which the State can boast, and yet we use the small portion 
allotted to us in such a way that we scarcely have any part 
in its resulting influence, prosperity and glory. 


10 


There are now about seven hundred and fifty thousand 
Negroes in South Carolina and allowing twenty five dollars 
a head for consumptions annually, we would have the 
enormous aggregate amount of eighteen million seven hun- 
dred and fifty thousand dollars and allowing a profit of 
twenty per cent. which is about the usual income on busi- 
ness investments in this State, we find a clear profit resultin 
trom our business of over four million and five hundrec 
thousand dollars. 

If we had one third of this amount added to our wealth, 
for each one of the twenty-five years of our freedom, we 
would own the State of South Carolina and have more than 
the computed wealth of all the Negroes in the United States. 

The handling of this enormous business resulting from | 
our productions and consumptions, gives employment of 
comparative ease and profit in which we scarcely have any 
part, to more than fifty thousand persons in our State alone. 

If we had owned and controlled even a fifth of the profits 
resulting from our business, there would be to our credit 
to-day instead of ten over a hundred million of dollars and 
as a natural consequence we would have ten times more 
than our present influence and power. 

The fact that such conditions are the silent influences 
that are consigning us to eternal degradation cannot be too 
orcibly impressed upon our minds. 

Our narrow view of the influence of money makes us 
careless as to how and where we spend it. 

As a race, we have various practices, customs and ideas of 
which we must free ourselves before we can ascend the lad- 
der of progress, prosperity and influence alongside the other 
races in this or any other country. 

Among these is the notion that the prosperity and wealth 
of one member of the race benefits him only. 

This idea and one that I shall name later on damage us 
more than all other agencies combined. 

It makes us careless about where and to whom we give 
our patronage. 

It makes the education of our children a failure and our 
educated young men and women a laughing stock. 

You and your white neighbors send your sons and 
daughters to college at the same time and they graduate 
with equal honors and are equally competent to perform 
any class of mental labor. 

Their sons and daughters return home to find employ- 
ment in keeping with their tastes and education, 


11 


They become salesmen, clerks, book-keepers, secretaries, 
superintendents, commercial agents, &c. 

Yours, on returning from college, if they do not care to 
become preachers, whether called or not, or teachers at star- 
vation wages, find employment only as servants, perform- 
ing the hardest kind of manual labor, or in their 
attempt to ape their white contemporaries in dress, 
refinement, ease and travel, which is too often done, with- 
out the foundation either in wealth or employment to sus- 
tain them, very often find themselves in disgrace, in prison- 
houses and penitentiaries. 

Then, my friends, you are doing your children great 
damage in educating them for a heritage which you insist 
in your aid in giving to others. 

While these young people were at school and since their 
return, you, as well as your white neighbors have been 
spending your money and dispensing your patronage to 
give employment and wealth to theirs and none to yours. 

Then if the education of your children don’t make them 
wise and powerful enough to convert stones into bread, 
empty air into elegant raiment, splendid mansions and fine 
horses and carriages, and water into wine, you, yourselves 
very often join the slanderous chorus in pronouncing the 
Negro’s education a failure. 

Again this custom of spending all your substance where 
it only gives employment to, and build and enrich your 
white neighbors, has the effect of doing double injury to 
you as a race. 

It not only confirms them in their opinions and convic- 
tions of your innate degradation, but leaves your race in such 
a helpless and dependent condition that it loses confidence 
in its own possibilities and capabilities. 

Take the condition of the race in this city, for illustration, 
whose immense Negro population, both within and beyond 
its immediate limits, ought to make it the Eden of America 
for us. 

The business of this city of over fifty thousand inhabi- 
tants, more than half of which are Negroes, stands a monu- 
ment of shame to the entire race, and a menacing danger 
to the recognition of our manhood and the equality of our 
humanity, and exposes as nothing else can, our ignorance, 
folly and incapacity. 

In all this broad land I do not believe another city can 
be found in proportion to its Negro population, where the 
colored people are doing such little business, and as a con- 
sequence exercise so little influence as in Charleston. 


12 


The conditions that are apparent to the minds of our 
friends, from whatever parts they hail, while travelling 
through the business thoroughfares of the city, and scan- 
ning with eager eyes to see what part we are playing in 
them, create doubts in their minds regarding our capacity 
and possibility, and generally lower their estimation of us. 

They are forced to ask what is the matter with these 
people? 

When they shall have returned to their homes, they will 
be less disposed to dispute our slanderers and traducers, 
more given to believe in our eternal inferiority and degra- 
dation. 

Negro men of Charleston, before your race and yourselves 
can be elevated, these conditions must change, and it re- 
mains to be seen how long you are going to sleep over your 
opportunities. 

By your present practices you have barred and are 
barring almost the entire race, out of the field as merchants 
bankers, book-keepers, commercial agents, superintendents, 
secretaries, clerks, salesmen and even as teachersin your 
school, which are filled to a great extent by persons who for 
watt of employment more in keeping with their taste and 
preference, teach a class of people that they scorn and at 
times put on inelegant smiles at the little black faces up 
turned to theirs for instruction, encouragement and inspira- 
tion. 

Ifyou walk around the docks and wharves of the city 
and keep both eyes open, you will see signs on the labor 
horoscope that your employment even as manual laborers, 
is gradually being curtailed. . 

Just as soon as the white longshoreman organization is 
strong enough, the occupation of the colored brotherhood 
is gone. 

The Jews have been and are now a proscribed race, but 
they have pride and confidence in themselves and believe 
that they are God’s chosen race. 

Although they are scattered all over the known surface 
of the earth and various attempts have been made to anni- 
hilate them in some countries and exterminate them from 
others, still they live, multiply and prosper, and are becom- 
ing more powerful and influential every day. 

It is a rare thing to see a Jew in prison or Jewess in a 
house of ill-repute. 

On account of the Jewish grip on the business strings of 
the world they are gaining stronger and stronger recognition 
in every walk of life, daily. 


13 


One of the greatest triumphs of the Jewish nation in 
modern times, was when a Jew became chief owner and 
controller of the Bank of England, the strongest banking 
institution in the world. 

You would have hardly seen a Disraeli as premier of 
England had there not been a Rothschild as chief banker. 

There never was an earl of Beaconsfield until there was 
a Baron De Rothschild. 

The trait among the whites of taking care of their own 
is not so much hatred for us as love for themselves. 

This very characteristic, illustrations of which stand 
out as great lamps to light our paths darkened by ignorance 
and folly, should teach us a lesson. 

The poorest white man, straggling along your streets, 
half-naked, hungry and debased, regards himself superior 
to the best of you, including even the members of that 
mysterious and would-be royal club styling itself “The 
Colored Four Hundred.” 

He says to himself, and sometimes to others, I know that 
I am poor and worthless, but I belong toa proud, rich and 
powerful race, controlling all the business of this country, 
and consequently its government. 

Again he says, representatives of my race occupy those 
splendid mansions and powerful seats of government over 
there, and at times turns and asks you where are your rep- 
resentatives of which you can be proud ? 

My advice is, treat him kindly and give him food, for to- 
day you meet him a loafer and beggar—to-morrow super- 
intendent or head man of the contract in which you are 
engaged as laborers, or clerk, book-keeper or salesman in 
the business your patronage made possible, when he was 
not known, and in which all such employment is denied 
you, notwithstandiug the fact your known ability and hon- 
esty may be such as to give you claim to superiority over 
him. 

Do you ask how long such conditions will last? We an- 
swer, as long as you take your patronage, and desert your- 
selves and hug the wandering Jew. and tramping Dutch 
and Irishmen, who many times are so poor and unregarded 
that they are not admitted even in the kitchens of their 
own color and race till the profits of your trade make them 
merchant princes and moneyed aristocrats, when they, In 
turn, forgetfulof their former condition and your aid, use the 
powers given by you to crush you and yours; as long as 
you persist in building up every nationality to the exclu- 
sion of yourselves. 


14 


These practices are two-edged swords’ which cut going 
and coming. 

In building up others, and keeping ourselves poor and 
dependent, we cause them in their riches, splendor and 
power to look down upon us with scorn and disdain, and 
destroy our respect for, confidence and pride in ourselves, 

Again, we have been incalculably damaged by our would- 
be business men, whose acts and dispositions in too many 
instances show that they seek the favor and patronage of 
the race, not that it might be built up and strengthened 
through them, but for selfish purposes only. 

Very often, after they shall have been favored and patron- 
ized and made rich and strong, they show a disposition to get 
as far away from the race as possible, and endeavor to use 
the influence and power of the means made through its 
favor to buy association even with the lowest element of 
the whites. 

Such men attempt to rise on the race, not with it, and as 
soon as the race is conscious of the fact it deserts them, as it 
ought to do. 

While negro merchants, bankers, railroad magnates, mil- 
lionaires, commercial agents, &c., are as necessary to give 
tone, respectability and character to the race as air to ani- 
mal life, we must bear in mind that they will not spring 
into existence unaided, uncultivated and unpatronized in a 
single night or decade, as Jonah’s gourd. 

They will only come with the most favorable patronage, 
after the second and third generations of unremitting toil, 
long-suffering and self- denials 

When we shall have them in proportion to our numbers 
and consumptions as others, and not till then, we shall cease 
to.complain of discriminations in employment, business, 
traveling and politics. 

All wealth rests upon the broad and ever-widening base 
of the industry and manual labor of the masses, and we 
have all the crude elements of greatness, if rightly used, to 
make us as rich, wise, noble and honorable a race as 
breathes the purifying air of heaven. 

In order to elevate ourselves we must elevate the race, 
and to do that we must study and practice those principles 
that tend to lift the masses as each does his individual wel- 
fare. 

Our solid business classes and capitalists are as sure to 
follow well-patronized Negro enterprises as the fine business 
block is to come after the rural shop and little corner store. 


15 


For many reasons it is more incumbent upon colored 

business men to be strict in business, just in weights and 
measures, and liberal in prices than white men, because as 
a race we have neither secured a standing in the business 
world, nor the confidence and patronage of ourselves. 
_ The world seems inclined to attribute every Negro failure 
to the innate weakness of the race, and every robbery in 
weights, measures and prices and every failure to pay his 
debts by one Negro, hurt all his struggling brothers. 

Superior condition everywhere seems to carry with it the 
idea of natural superiority 

From time unauthenticated, in all the old countries of 
of the world, the belief has, and still obtains, that God cre- 
ated certain families ona different order and endowed them 
with divine rights and wisdom to rule their fellows, which 
has been and is still the great hindrance to republican 
government in all oriental countries. 

It appears that it was a special design of the Creator to 
preserve the American continent, a wilderness of savage 
wilds, as a training ground for republican ideas, and the 
destruction of that ancient, deified and idolized notion. 

It was only the bitterest and rudest necessity that edu- 
cated the American immigrant up to the realization of his 
own power to make laws and govern himself, and it was 
only after a seven years’ war, in which he learned to hate 
England and everything English, that he was able to free 
himself from the slavish worship and imitation of the Eng- 
lish royalty and aristocracy. 

Blot out all modern history, the history of all races for 
the last two thousand years, and reverse the ‘conditions of 
the races in this country, and you would find as many 
white men trying to be black, as you now find black men 
trying to be white. 

You would find white men painting themselves black, 
in order to enjoy the superior condition of that color. 

But, men of Charleston, if you were to ask me what im- 
mediate steps should be taken for the betterment of your 
condition, I would answer by beseeching you to organize 
yourselves into vigilance committees, and join with the of- 
ficers of the law in hunting down every vagrant and loafer 
that haunts your streets 

He stands, an impending danger to the dignity of your 
labor, imperils your opportunity to receive living wages, 
and contaminates the morals and weakens the industrious 
habits of your children, 


16 


Vagrants and loafers never work unless driven to it by 
starvation and nakedness, and then only long enough to 
supply immediate want, generally without regard to price. 

A large surplus of floating labor always destroys honest 
wages, and injures the laboring class. 

It makes your wages low by working for loss than living 
wages. 

It lessens your manhood by submitting to treatment that 
all honest labor, devoid of such an element, resents 

If this element i is composed of Negroes, it cheapens your 
color and the virtue of your females. 

In fact, wherever there is a larger amount of labor than 
can find steady employment, it damages both the class with 
and without employment, whether the unemployed claes i is 
lazy or industrious. 

A hungry man seldom stops to inquire what is fair 
wages for his labor, but seizes anything he can get to keep 
his soul and body together, and as such destroys the chance 
for living wages among all his fellows. 

This city is being continually overstocked with more 
people than can find living employment. and while this 
larger population has a tendency to increase the cost of living 
in the rents, for the more renters the greater the competi- 
tion among them, and consequently the higher the rent, yet 
in the same proportion that the rent is increased the wages 
ot the renter have depreciated. —- 

Again, this surplus population does aus only compete as 
renters but also as laborers, and as the area of employ- 
ment has not kept pace with the increase of employees ; we 
have more hands to do the same work, and consequently 
each is bound to get less pay. 

Again, the two men standing at the door of the work- 
shop, and on the docks where vessels are discharged and 
loaded, begging for employment, to each one employed 
makes the boss careless both as to the wages and the treat- 
ment he gives to his laborers, and answers their complaints 
at the low wagef and rude treatment by telling them that he 
can get along without them, and they need not return next 
day. 

Your labor organizations, in order to protect yourselves, 
must either find employment for the unemployed or drive 
themout of the city. 

There are too many young men and women quitting the 
country and leaving the protection of their parents and 
homes, and throwing themselves ignorantly and shamefully 


17 


on the tender mercies of avarice, lust and insatiable ambi-. 
tion of human sharks. 

- The only way to check this dangerous influx of popula- 

tion, and save the morals of the race in this place, is to 

force it to find employment or quit the city. 

Again, we are creditably informed that there are between 
a hundred and seventy-five and two hundred thousand dol-. 
lars of Negro money locked up in the banks of Charieston,. 
where you or your sons, however fit, can scarcely te 
porters. 

According to our modern business systems, leaving out 
the wholesale business, this amount of money with its in- 
fluence, is sufficient to run a third of the business of the 
city. 

The individual depositors in thus depositing their capital, 
harm themselves in one respect and the race in many. 
They have deposited their money where they can 
scarcely realize over six or seven per cent. annually, while’ 
if they had invested in business enterprises it was possible 
for them to acquire all the way from twenty up to fifty per 

cent. 

Secondly, this sum of money invested in business would 
give employment of a higher order to more than five hun- 
dred persons, young men and women of the race, which 
would enable them, each year, besides being refined and 
trained in the management of business, to add to their in- 
dividual incomes and the credit of the race collectively. 

Thirdly, the business thus created in proportion to its 
size would give the race more influence in every direction. 

Although our consumptions make a large proportion of 
the business of the city and State, because so little of it 
is run through and by us, we get no credit for it. 

The question is asked by the enemies and traducers of 
the race, and sometimes our frignds, where are your busi- 
ness men ? 

What do you cdhtribute to the business of the city ? 

Neither you as individuals, nor the race as a whole, get 
any credit for, or scarcely any profit from the business of 
this city. 

If we controlled a fourth of the business of Charleston 
the white people almost without asking, would make con- 
cessions in the city government to us. 

You would have Negro aldermen in the City Council 
helping to make rules and regulations for the government 
of the same, who sagen be selected not because they in 

2 


18 


some sense had proven themselves traitors to the cause of 
the race they represent, but as honorable representatives of 
the colored business men. : 

You would then have policemen and other officers and 
tribble your present influence in the Courts of the city, 
county and state, and even as laborers you would enjoy 
larger freedom and consideration from the reflex infiuence 
resulting from this business. 

Fourthly, such a business would have created a rivalry 
among the colored boys and girls to especially fit them- 
selves for certain lines of business, for a higher employ- 
ment would have been opened up to, and a nobler destiny 
made for them. 

It would have given new hopes, encouragements and 
aspirations to the race, causing its members to feel that it 
amounted to something, who would have more confidence 
and pride in the race as a whole and themselves as indi- 
viduals. , 

It would have forced out the required and indispensable 
latent forces necessary to bring to the surface the respecta- 
bility and nobility of the race, 

Why this money is locked up almost out of reach asa 
profit and influence to help either the individual depositors 
or the race as a whole, there are three principal causes. 

Primarily, capital is always conservative and will either 
find profitable and safe investments or safe keeping with 
little profit, and as long as Negro merchants and business 
men of all classes fail for want of the: patronage and en- 
couragement cf the masses of the race, you will tind n 
capital seeking safe depositories with iittle profit to the in- 
dividual depositors, and no influence and help to the race 
as a whole. 

Secondly ; as we have not yet established confidence either 
in ourselves or the businesg world, every failure on the part- 
of one Negro is regarded 48 an innate weakness in the race, 
not only by the business world and th@ enemies to the | 
progress of the race, but even ourselves. 

White men intrusted with the capital of hundreds and 
thousands of others, in every part of the country are failing 
for, and stealing their, hundreds of thousands every day, 
and no one is disposed to regard all white men as failures 
and robbers on account of the short-comings of these indi- 
viduals. 

The business of the world goes on, and where one white 
man fails or steals, another is placed in his stead, and be- 


19 


lieved to be a success or honest unless he proves himself . 
otherwise. 

It is not so with us. Because some Negroes robbed the 
race in the Freedman bank, the Azor enterprise and some 
other joint stock arrangements, we ourselves seem to pro- 
nounce all Negroes failures and robbérs, and are not dis- 
posed to intrust the race with anything. 

Inasmuch as we are so unfair, prejudiced and uncharita- 
ble to ourselves, what can we expect of others ? 

I want to call your attention to another hindering cause 
to the progress of the race in this city especially. 

Our social customs and habits, mainly among the higher 
classes, are too extravagant and unreasonable for a people 
in our condition. 

They tend to create an aristocracy with a big head and 
body, and no legs and feet to stand upon. 

This idiotic imitation of the aristocracy among the whites 
without their means of supporting it, keep the industrious 
and deserving men and women of the race eternally on 
the grind-stone, and cause very many of our young men 
and women to destroy themselves in foolish attempts and 
bad practices to keep up with them. 

The higher class of white people which we strain our- - 
selves so hard to imitate in this particular, has not always, 
itself, shown the best common sense. 

You will see, by’a casual glance at the business of the 
city, that in its persistency in straining its patrimony and 
income, to keep up certain old and effete customs and 
notions, it has lost its power and almost all its influence. 

Your eyes will search East Bay in vain to find the de- 
scendants of that class of men who use to rule that great 
mart, but spent all their substance to keep up with the re- 
fined taste of Saint Cecilia and other fastidious clubs, thereby 
making it possible for the descendants of men who then 
had what was regarded as no society, to rule the business 
of the city and own its palatial mansions and magnificent 
business blocks. ; 

This is a lesson and an encouragement to that class of 
men who free themselves from the unreasonable customs, 
restraints and conventionalities of society, in order that they 
might lay by something for old age and posterity. 

I think there is serious need of reformation along this 
line. 

My friends$ experience, ill treatment, the condition of the 
race, want of race pride and self preservation, all demand 


20 


that we stand unitedly and resolutely for the elevation of 
the race with which it has pleased God to connect us, and 
in the absence of whose elevation, we as individuals are tied 
down, 

However much tle race may differ in complexion as the 
result of the force immoral conditions and turpitude of 
slavery, all are Negroes, treated as such and must be sus- 
tained as. such, unless individuals-singly or unitedly, 
attempt to establish society and superiority predicated upon 
a color having its origin in questionable sources. 

Then every Negro, no matter what may be the shade of 
his’ complexion, who loves himself, his wife and children 
and his mother, and desires to see his race elevated, respected 
and honored, must oppose such individuals as he would the 
robber of his money safe or the raper of his loving daughter. 

Such parties are the worst enemies of the race, because 
their acts tend to divide, humiliate, and bring the just con- 
tempt and odium of the world upon it. 

To sustain them is to deny our humanity and the common 
brotherhood of mankind. 

~The most unreasonable, contemptible, shameful and in- 
consistent phenomenon that ever appeared, is that wherein 
‘an individual whose origin-is not in every respect covered 
with glory, even while standing aghast with horror stricken 
face at the discrimination of white people on account of 
caste prejudices, and calling on men, angels and God to 
condemn.them, at the same time, he without half the virtue 
or honor of origin and without any reason, except a slavish 
connivance at the color of the class that scorns him, is en- 
gaged in the same practices only in a more disgusting 
manner. 

To build society upon the solid pillows of virtue, intelli- 

gence and wealth, is reasonable, wholesome and beneficial. 
' The idiotic attempt to found society upon eolor, espe- 
cially that having its origin in questionable fountains is un- 
reasonable and damaging beyond imagination and is really 
an encouragement in, and invitation to, the destruction of 
all morality and virtue. 
- To support such an unholy and immoral principle is to 
make our boys representing the purity and nobility of the 
race ashamed of their dark faces, the very ensigns of what 
remains of the virtue and morality of a noble though de- 
graded race whose grandeur and accomplishments date 
beyond the remotest records of authentic history, and to 
whose achievements in science, art and literature, the 
world is indebted. 


21 


It putrifies the virtue of our black maidens and forces 
them to ignore the sanctity of home and reject union in 
holy wedlock with those of their kind, in order that they 
might bring forth an issue, even if through unholy alliances 
whose caste would give it privilege, under the customs, to 
enjoy a higher condition. 

Men and women of the race, in the name of your children, 
in the name of the purity and honor of the race and the 
sanctity of home, and in the name of the laws of your coun- 
try and the precious teachings of the Christian religion, I 
beseech you to oppose individuals of your race setting up 
claims to superiority and preferment predicated upon color, 
as you would the incendiary who attempts in your presence 
to apply the torch to your dwelling. 

If they are business men shun their places of business as 
you would the poisonous fangs of the anaconda. 

If they are politicians, tear the tickets presented to you 
bearing their names into atoms and trample the fragments 
under your feet, for to vote for them is to kill the ambition 
and manhood of your sons who represent the nobility of 
the race. 

‘Tf they are preachers, drive them from your pulpits with 
the same activity and manhood that you would display in 
driving out the midnight burglar, who had stealthily — 
forced his way into your house to rob you of your gold or 
to despoil the virtue of your loving daughters, for truly 
these are they who stole the livery of heaven to serve the 
devil in, The sum of all-that I have said is love God with 
all your might and yourselves, as you do your neighbors. 

In conclusion, let the history of Africa with its archi- 
tectural and mechanical beauties—relics of which still elicit 
the admiration and wonder of the world and its great feats 
in art, science and literature, while the rest of the world 
with its inhabitants dwelling in woods, dens, and caves, 
was in pitchy darkness, and its royal seats of learning stand- 
ing out as great beacon lights to illuminate the dark places, 
and as lanterns to the inhabitants of Europe, Asia and Ameri- 
ea, from which all evidence point to the fact that they bor- 
rowed their original torches, which is your history, and the 
deeds and achievements of individual members of the race, 
though not specially recorded as Negroes until since the wan- 
ing of the great luminaries, in the light of which all Negroes 
stood in:pride and respectability and were honored and ad- 
mired and the Africans like the later inhabitants of Greece and 
Rome reached their zenith and again descended into degra- 


22 


dation to such an extent that they would have lost all the 
credit of their glorious achievements and contributions to 
the progress of the world, had they not left such induring 
monuments of their ancient greatness in the Pyramids, 
Sphinx and Mummies which will go down the ages as silent 
witnesses and fresh evidence of the capability and—power of 
a noble race to the last syllable of recorded time, reanimate 
you to have more pride and respect for yourselves, and to 
make greater efforts to regain your standing and heritage in 
the history of the grandeur of earth and the glory and crown 
of heaven, 








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